From the Rolls-Royce experimental archive: a quarter of a million communications from Rolls-Royce, 1906 to 1960's. Documents from the Sir Henry Royce Memorial Foundation (SHRMF).
Performance report on a car's acceleration, maximum speed, steering, and brakes, mentioning Major Seagrave.
| Identifier | Morton\M16\ img062 | |
| Date | 20th August 1929 guessed | |
| -2- ACCELERATION The top gear acceleration of the car is better than anything we have previously tried. This is to be expected owing to the large engine displacement and the fact that they appear to have lowered their gear ratio slightly. Even from 10 m.p.h. its acceleration is good and it is tractable in traffic. As a rough approximation from figures, on local test hills its acceleration from 10 to 40 m.p.h. is 10 to 15% better than 18-EX. MAXIMUM SPEED. Major Seagrave was under the impression that his car would do 100 m.p.h. in touring trim. We found that, as in every sports car we have tested, the speedometer was fast, in this case 13% at 60 m.p.h. Owing to the gear ratio used to get acceleration, and the fact that the car has normal wings and a reasonable body, we should estimate that the lap speed of the car on Brooklands would not be more than 85 m.p.h. Major Seagrave was very surprised to hear this and had no idea that his speedometer was fast, which indicates the success that this practice has in deceiving the general public. STEERING. The sponginess of the steering with the low pressure tyres was most noticeable, being very much more pronounced than on any Rolls-Royce car. The car, however, was quite controllable and Seagrave did not complain about lack of selectivity. We prefer our own steering. BRAKES. The brakes were unpleasantly fierce and the servo | ||